Potted film reviews by Gary Anthony Cross

Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

Captain Jack Sparrow returns to join a race against the Spanish Royal Navy, the newly commissioned Captain Barbossa and Blackbeard to find the fountain of youth.

The latest instalment of one of the most popular franchise of modern times contains all of the crowd-pleasing ingredients you’d expect, but somehow this latest incarnation manages to completely fail to capture the magic that made the original film so much fun. It’s basically just like a piratised version of National Treasure with some Harry Potter hoodoo and supernatural beasties thrown in as it lumbers from one bloated, joyless set piece to the next. Even Johnny Depp rarely gets the chance to strut his stuff, being pretty much relegated as he is to weak quips and mincing between one special effects overload to another and seems more like a Captain Jackogram lost in a noisy, overcrowded theme park than the star of the show.

It’s not an awful film but there is certainly the distinct stagnant aroma of a franchise gone stale.